As I sit down to type: we just got back from the hospital, now that he was up to visitors.
He and his wife told us he went from fine to, two hours later, her asking whether she should call an ambulance–but they got in the car and she raced for the ER. They wondered out loud between them whether he would have made it if they’d waited for a 911 response. He described what happened next as staggering in the door there knowing he was dying and he had no idea why.
They had no idea triage could work that fast.
The first surgery was in the middle of the night. The second was the second day. The twisted paralyzed part of his intestines is gone now and he was actually eating a liquid bit of dinner.
Plain chicken broth is the worst, she said.
Actually, it’s pretty good, he said, glad to be able to get anything that wasn’t through an IV.
She said she knew he was feeling better when he started wisecracking at the nurses to make them laugh.
My rule of thumb is never stay more than an hour; let the patient rest, and so it was. But he looked way better than I expected.
After all the times they showed up for us it felt good to be able to be there for them.